Thousands of travelers exposed to new credit breach that started March 2013

The large-scale theft of personal and credit-card information at Target is rekindling a long-running debate between banks and retailers over who should bear the costs of a cybersecurity breach. Ryan Tracy reports. Photo: AP.

on.aol.com

White Lodging which manages hotel franchises for major chains such as the Marriott, Hilton and Starwood Hotel syndicates appears to have been the target of yet another payment information breach. Investigators say the breach seems to have started early in March and continued for the rest of 2013. That means countless travelers were exposed for almost 10 months without warning.

“Earlier this month, multiple sources in the banking industry began sharing data indicating that they were seeing a pattern of fraud on hundreds of cards that were all previously used at Marriott hotels from roughly March 23, 2013 on through the end of last year. But those same sources said they were puzzled by the pattern of fraud, because it was seen only at specific Marriott hotels, including locations in Austin, Chicago Denver, Los Angeles, Louisville and Tampa.”

Marriott has issued a statement, noting that “one of its franchisees has experienced unusual fraud patterns in connection with its systems that process credit card transactions at a number of hotels across a range of brands, including some Marriott-branded hotels.” The statement continues:

"Sources say the breach appears to have affected mainly restaurants, gift shops and other establishments within hotels managed by White Lodging — not the property management systems that run the hotel front desk computers which handle guests checking in and out."

Share this article

Linda Foley is a nationally awarded expert in identity theft and has been an advocate for child and family identity theft victims for 15 years. Foley is a Distinguished Fellow of the Ponemon Research Foundation, an exclusive group of data protection security specialists. She has testified in state and federal hearings, has been featured in dozens of magazine and newspaper articles, and written extensively about the impact of identity theft on its victims. She is sought by both businesses and legislators for subject matter training.
ALL SUBSCRIBERS: I have started a new title- National Identity Theft. Please subscribe to this title to get the latest articles.

Visa and MasterCard are renewing a push to speed the adoption of microchips into U.S. credit and debit cards in the wake of recent high-profile data breaches, including this week's revelation that hackers stole consumer data from eBay's computer...

You won't be able to see it, but in the dark corners of the internet, hundreds of millions of dollars are being stolen from banks all over the world. Cybercriminals in Russia, Ukraine and China are at the heart. And the attacks are still happening...

The fallout from the massive data breach announced by insurer Anthem Inc. earlier this week just got larger. The company behind Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance informed customers Friday to be wary of an email scam that is aimed at current and former...